Set up - You were hired in the role of accounting lead a couple of years ago by a privately held company.
You report directly to the CEO. The company sells its products through a dealer distribution network.
Revenue is booked at the time shipment occurs. Under standard practice, revenue will be booked as of the last day of the month if the shipment will occur within 1 or 2 days of the new month. On occasion, revenue may be booked if the product is ready for shipment but the dealer/customer does not wish to take shipment due to a holiday or vacation schedule. (So, if the shipment does not occur only because it is inconvenient for the dealer/customer to receive it, the customer is charged a nominal “warehousing” fee and revenue will be recognized in such situations; shipment will occur as soon as it’s convenient for the dealer/customer to receive the shipment upon their return to the workplace.) Since the company is privately held, it does not require a financial audit but it does receive an annual financial review by an independent CPA firm.
The Issue - At quarter end, you receive a call from your boss instructing you to book a $100,000 sale, sending the invoice to a dealer/customer. On April 4, you send the invoice dated the last day of the month (3/31) and you give the dealer/customer an additional 30 days to pay since the product had not yet shipped as of April 4. The dealer/customer replies that as of April 5, he still does not have a purchase order for the $100,000 sale but hopes to get one soon. In addition, if he cannot get the purchase order, he hopes to get a purchase order elsewhere for basically the same products for a hopefully similar price.
In addition, at the end of 2017, there was an order to be secured by a letter of credit. The CEO wants the almost $100,000 sale in 2017. You let the CEO know you’re hesitant to book this in 2017 since the order has not shipped and no letter of credit has been sent yet. There are also tax ramifications (i.e., the company will fare better booking the sale in 2018 due to the more favorable tax treatment of corporations under the new tax legislation). The CEO replies that before he decides, he wants to see how the numbers shake out. He decides he wishes the revenue to appear in 2017.
There were some other bookings of revenues with various dealer/customers in quarter 1 totaling approximately $150,000, for which letter of credit documentation had not yet been received. The dealer/customers had not yet authorized shipment because the required documentation had not yet cleared all channels (it was not due to holiday/vacation reason inconvenience), but the CEO said to consider these transactions “warehoused” and book the revenue.
In addition to the fact that the review of 2017 is still ongoing, the company is looking to sell approximately 20% of its stock to a publicly traded company. The 2017 financials have been provided to the potential buyer (marked “unreviewed”) and the potential buyer has been asking for the quarter 1 results of 2018.
Get with your group. What is your view of the entire situation? What do you do? Be sure to pay attention to rules/regs that lead you to feel there is an ethical problem here.
1. Determine the facts of the situation. This involves determining the "who, what, where, when, and how."
2. Identify the ethical issue and the stakeholders. Stakeholders may include shareholders, creditors, management, employees, and the community.
3. Identify the values related to the situation. For example, in some situations confidentiality may be an important value that may conflict with the right to know.
4. Specify the alternative courses of action.
5. Evaluate the courses of action specific in step 4 in sterms of their consistency with the values identified in step 3. This step may or may not lead to a suggested course of action.
6. Identify the consequences of each possible course of action. If step 5 does not provide a course of action, assess the consequences of each possible course of action for all of the stakeholders involved.
7. Make your decision and take any indicated action.